Water utility companies provide water to customers through a network of water pipes. The size of pipes may vary depending on the volume of water that is designed to flow through a particular section of pipe. For example, large water mains may provide water distribution in areas close to the source of the water and the size of pipes may decrease as the distance from the source increases. One concern for water utility companies is the loss of water through leaks in the pipes. Not only do leaks waste clean potable water, but sometimes contaminants may be introduced into the water supply from outside the pipes.
Due to the rapidly escalating costs of potable water, the scarcity of fresh water supplies, and the increasing costs for water treatment and distribution, minimizing leaks in water distribution systems is a goal of both public and private water distribution utilities. If a leak is not particularly conspicuous, it may go undetected for months at a time without repair. It is therefore important to be able to detect leaks early. One technique for detecting leaks is to measure pressure. However, a leak in a piping system may not necessarily produce a head pressure that appears as a change from normal pressures. The presence of “silent leaks” (undetected leaks) diminishes the value of a system that detects leaks based on head pressure since reducing leaks is the reason water companies install the system in the first place. In addition to allowing leaks to go undetected, another issue with existing leak detection systems is the high rate of false alarms. A false alarm, for instance, may cause extraneous and costly maintenance activity or it may diminish the effectiveness of the detection system since operators may start to ignore leak warnings. There is therefore a need for a leak detection system that accurately detects leaks in a network of water pipes.